]]>http://www.nardinesaad.com/wethetshirt/we-the-t-shirt-lite/feed/0The Evolution of T-Shirt Styleshttp://www.nardinesaad.com/wethetshirt/the-evolution-of-t-shirt-styles/
http://www.nardinesaad.com/wethetshirt/the-evolution-of-t-shirt-styles/#commentsSat, 13 Mar 2010 07:01:55 +0000Nardine Saadhttp://www.nardinesaad.com/wethetshirt/?p=476The t-shirt has gone through quite a few transformations in its day and we’ve come to expect various iterations on the tee depending on our preferences.

ROLLOVER the grey t-shirts below to reveal the backstories on some t-shirts you may have stashed in your closet.

She chose the t-shirt as an artifact to study because of its “pervasiveness in society and unisex nature” and in many cases it communicates a message as its primary function. Cornwell included herself and four other individuals in the sample for this study.

In the article, Cornwell cites the spirituality of t-shirts, t-shirts as labels of cultural category, in rites of passage, as trophies and as “poly-cotton pheromones.”

An overview of the results in Cornwell's study. Source: Association of Consumer Research

You may have seen Bettina Cornwell’s ideas sprinkled throughout other stories. Here’s the full transcript of her interview with We, the T-shirt.

Q: What’s your own individual experience with the t-shirt? How did you become the t-shirt person’ at University of Michigan?

A: I worked on the consumer research paper on ritual about t-shirts as ritual objects. One of my major streams of research is on corporate sponsorship: sports, entertainment, arts and charity. One of the things that you’ll typically find at a sponsored event is the t-shirt to commemorate the event for you and that’s part of the ritual discussion. So, a lot of times you have people buying Olympic t-shirts when they go to the Olympics and they get a Komen Foundation Breast Cancer Research Race For the Cure t-shirt if they run in the race. [There were] cute t-shirts for men, at one point they had the ‘Breast Friends’ for cancer t-shirts. And my take on t-shirts as ritual objects is a bit related to that research and this idea that you want to commemorate and to remember events that are important to you. T-shirts are utter collectible objects but you don’t really go around with your set of matchbooks or you know whatever you’ve collected, but t-shirts allow you to say “Oh I went to the Bahamas last month” or whatever you want to tell people.

Q: What is the allure of the free t-shirt? Why do people do things they normally wouldn’t (i.e. sign up for a credit card, participate in buffalo wing eating contest) just to get a free shirt or mug etc.?

A: I think the overall phenomenon of people willing to do things for a premium (a marketing premium)..It’s difficult isn’t it, it’s sort of irrational. People will eat more than they should because a deal is offered to them, [they’ll] buy more product than they need. They feel like they’re getting a deal or they feel like they’re getting something “for free” would be my assay of why a t-shirt works so well. I think also, sometimes at least, getting a free t-shirt, which was in the Association of Consumer Research article…In that paper the research would talk about a ritual like participating in a buffalo wing eating contest is fun and you get a free t-shirt that’s sort of silly or crazy and it’s part of a ritual—a way of socializing with another person and sort of tell them what you’re about.

Q: There are conflicting arguments about the origins of the t-shirt. Where do you believe it originated?

A: I don’t have any information on the t-shirt as we now know it. I think pretty much everyone agrees it began somewhere as an undergarment and then its popularity has essentially skyrocketed because our society has become so casual. And we don’t dress up like we used to do anything…and with that comes the tracksuits and jeans and sort of everything else that goes with the t-shirt.

Q: Has the t-shirt had a causal role in making our society more casual?

A: In our movement toward casual that wearing a t-shirt is sort of an artifact, not a causal factor. How much more casual can you get than walking around in your underwear, right? Pajamas are even somewhat more formal than underwear. So, no, I think it didn’t make the trend but it certainly has ridden on it. I don’t think it’s the source of change but certainly is an artifact of change. You can see that people are wearing t-shirts, but the move toward casual [culture] is precipitated by the t-shirt becoming popular somehow.

Q: How is it that American society has become more casual then?

A: Well, particularly in the United States I think we’re, for example, more casual than the Europeans are. Off the top of my head, I would probably say it has maybe something to do with the fact that we at least profess being more egalitarian or hoping for everyone having an opportunity to make whatever they want with their lives. The truth of the matter is we have gaps and gulfs in the differences between people in their socioeconomic standings. But we have this idea that you can be anyone, you can self-create lends itself to finding your fashion or whatever else. Whereas, deciding to have more historic and structured requirements for the latter we would have more formalized clothing.

Q: The t-shirt started out as men’s underwear and is now considered a basic for both men and women. How did we get from that point to where we are now?

A: Americans in the main, while there are a few who will suffer for fashion, they like to be comfortable and t-shirts are inherently comfortable. And I think also they’re expressive for both men and women in the sense that you can have a logo or picture or a slogan on a t-shirt that expresses an aspect of self-identity and the potential to do that is there for both genders.

Q: Screen prints have made t-shirts into walking billboards and allowed companies, sports teams, bands and designers to get people to tout their name brands. As our culture has changed, how has that been reflected in the t-shirt?

A: The marketers see the t-shirt as a potential, as you say, walking billboard or premium that people will wear and that can communicate brand information. So they might like to make it as affordable as possible as another path for communication. So that relationship is easy to see.

Now why are people willing to do this? Well, brands function as chunks of information so you can tell something about yourself rather succinctly through a brand name, like you’re the type of person that would drive a Mercedes, BMW a Toyota, whatever. You’re the type of person that would attend a rodeo event or attend a baseball event. So you communicate aspects of your lifestyle and personality that is obviously useful for single individuals meeting other single individuals who might have shared interests. I think often that’s helpful for young people who are socializing and trying to meet other people who might be like-minded. It’s up and down the age spectrum. My father has one that’s funny and talks about Santa Clause and he feels quite good wearing that one. So I think people find that the brand expressions are succinct in communicating versus a self-prepared slogan or self-prepared picture. I mean there’s a lot of that around as well, but brand names do a lot of work very efficiently if you will.

Q: When you say brand names are you talking about something that is a designer or something that’s a Hanes or Fruit of the Loom type of t-shirt, or an American Apparel t-shirt?

A: When I say brands I certainly mean brands like Aeropostale, Abercrombie and Fitch, Hollister. But I also mean the t-shirt as a premium. Something that has the Lego brand name for children or has a Lego character on it or has a brand relationship to a movie. So if you really, really think Harry Potter is cool, and you’ve read all the books backwards and forwards five times, and you’ve seen every movie and you can quote scenes from the movie, it fits with your personal identity to wear a t-shirt with the brand information from the movie. It’s not that the t-shirt itself—the fabric, the fashion statement t-shirt from one of the retailers—but more that the t-shirt is being used as the medium for the brand and being used by the consumer as [conveying] information about themselves to others.

Q: Do you think people are conscious that they are playing a pretty large role in this hyper-capitalist-consumer method?

A: I think there are people that are and I think there people that are less aware. I think there are people that care, I think there are people that don’t. My daughter will go to some destructive distance to cut a brand name out of a piece of clothing because she’s just so anti-brand. Whereas, my 13-year-old will be more than happy to wear a brand that identifies with his personality. I think if there was an iTouch t-shirt out there he’d wear it.

Q: What do you think gets people to that point where they say “I am absolutely not going to indicate that I am wearing someone else’s name or somebody else’s brand”?

A: People want to buy a piece of clothing that is functional to them or that is visually aesthetic. They don’t want to feel painted into a corner to also promote that brand name. That lack of choice is important in some people’s decision-making.

People will certainly wear shirts that express other kinds of meanings. If you have an interest in solar energy, you might attend a solar energy event and wear the t-shirt. So, it’s not only brands, it’s not only hyper-consumerism. It also can be a public policy statement, an environmental statement. It can be a lot of things that are on a t-shirt. I think it’s a broader discussion than only hyper-commercial in terms of self-expression. People want to tell others about their thinking and their value set.

Q: Do you have a favorite t-shirt? Do you wear them on a regular basis?

A: I wear t-shirts to the gym for a workout. I have a t-shirt that, in the literature, is a collectible item, which I’ve removed from use (one definition for adults for collecting is to remove something from use.) When I presented that paper on t-shirts, one of the things that I did is print up some t-shirts because it was about t-shirts (it was a few like 9-10 of them) and took them to my session and they were incredibly popular because people liked to commemorate being at the conference as a popular one. So that’s one. I did my own graphic art on it and had it screen printed.

Q: How do you define collecting?

A: The definition of collecting easily can include that you have a goal-collecting behavior and you have a categorization scheme in mind and you collect objects whatever they may be—wristwatches, t-shirts, plates—and adult collectors at times will remove those objects from use. Child collectors may continue to use those collectible items.

Q: And the collectible item you have is this t-shirt from this conference?

A: Yes, it’s a collectible item because I’ve taken it and removed it from use. Another one that is in my collection is one that I got from the Russian embassy when I visited Russia.

Q: Why do you keep it around?

A: It’s very old now. It’s beigey. It has the onion dome on it. It’s a unique t-shirt, there’s not many of them around and again it’s commemorating or recognizing a period when I was doing something very different like traveling around Russia on a cultural exchange program with the University of Texas when I was getting my PhD.

Q: How do you think t-shirts have become such popular items of clothing? How many do you think are produced in the U.S.?

A: It’s whopping. I have no idea of the actual number. I do think there are t-shirts that are produced and are actually wasted and there are are far more t-shirts in the solid waste stream than there should be. Just because we can afford financially to print up t-shirts for every event that happens doesn’t necessarily mean we should.

Q: T-shirts have made a huge impact with sports teams and some people claim that sports fans can be just as bad as fashion victims. What is the effect of the interplay among sports, t-shirts and promoting?

A: T-shirts with names of teams on them allow us to communicate that we’re part of a group. This refers back to the research on tribalism. So we have now looser community relations overall in the United States. You don’t depend on others in your community quite as much as you did about a hundred years ago. I think that people are interested in having that connectivity and having a sense of community. Sometimes that’s rallied around brands, sometimes around sports team. There are things in the marketing literature called brand communities.

So people for example go to a Jeep jamboree and they are all Jeep owners and Jeep drivers. The same thing with sports teams, you’ve got, in a sense, an “extended self.” It’s more than just you, you’re part of a group, you have something in common with other people, you’re part of a community.

Q: And the t-shirt serves that function?

A: Moreover, you’re in a restaurant and you’re eating alone and you have your Lakers shirt on. Somebody can come up to you and say, “Hey Go Lakers,” and you say “Are you a Lakers fan, too?” “Yeah! Well, I live here!…blah, blah, blah.” So it’s a way to contact with an otherwise anonymous community. So on certain levels you join groups and you become part of various communities and you can communicate that membership on a t-shirt.

]]>http://www.nardinesaad.com/wethetshirt/bettina-cornwell-qanda/feed/1The T-Shirt: From Men’s Underwear to Casual Couturehttp://www.nardinesaad.com/wethetshirt/the-t-shirt/
http://www.nardinesaad.com/wethetshirt/the-t-shirt/#commentsWed, 03 Mar 2010 06:21:58 +0000Nardine Saadhttp://www.nardinesaad.com/wethetshirt/?p=366
There is the clean one, the wrinkled one, the ripped one, the one you kept after a breakup, the one from the concert you went to in your teens, the college one, the one with a sports logo, the one that doesn’t really fit but you can’t really part with and pile of ratty ones that you work out in. You probably also have some basic white ones, some you kept from your childhood and maybe ones you wear under your clothes. You probably remember the various ones that said “Kiss Me Because I’m (insert nationality here)” and the “Everyone Loves (blank) Girl/Boy” that popped up everywhere in the early 2000s. You may have been given a free one for signing up for a credit card or caught one thrown into the crowd during a sporting event.

The t-shirt is comfortable, durable and is the most thoughtless wardrobe item that says the most about its wearers. It is a way to promote yourself and your beliefs and everyone puts their name on it–corporations, couturiers and presidents alike. We’ve probably worn too many to count in our lifetimes and the t-shirt isn’t going anywhere. Instead, it has become a basic symbol for American culture and a wardrobe staple that we don’t even think twice about.

“It’s everywhere,” said David Knepprath, a Culver City silk screen printer. “It’s engrained in us as a kid–the branding stuff, it plays on you in your psychology.”

The t-shirt got its start as men's underwear. Today, the plain white tee is not only unisex but acceepted as outerwear and called a 'basic' wardrobe item. Photo: Nardine Saad

From men’s underwear to a walking billboard to high fashion, the t-shirt is just as useable as it was when if first cropped up in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Touted for comfort and hygiene, the breathable second skin really made its claim to fame when Hollywood bad boys like Marlon Brando and James Dean gave it its rebel cachet. According to Charlotte Brunel’s “The T-Shirt Book,” more than 2 billion shirts are sold annually worldwide, so the unisex basic has staying power for the very reason that it is becoming more and more disposable.

Most people don’t think about where their clothes come from, nor do they notice that the garments they don are a direct reflection of the times they live in. The symbol of casual couture is woven into American cultural history through capitalism and hyper-commercialism.

This is the story of the evolution of the modern t-shirt–from conception to consumption told through Los Angeles t-shirt companies and consumers.

“It’s a form that’s great because it’s a form that can constantly evolve but still stay the same,” said fashion expert Christina Johnson, the collections manager at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising Museum in Los Angeles.

Few items seem more all-American than a t-shirt, and this story begins with the power of the basic plain white tee. But first, a bit of history…

Brunel's 2002 book chronicles the history of the t-shirt and explains how it has become a cultural icon. Photo: Nardine Saad

Author Charlotte Brunel wrote in The T-Shirt Book that “the t-shirt is to clothing what the blank sheet of paper is to writing–a surface for imagination and free expression to run wild.”

Johnson couldn’t agree more. She, like many experts in the fashion industry, asserts that fashion is a direct reflection of culture.

“It’s really fascinating to take one garment and look at its transformation over the decades,” she said. “It’s easier to see fashion as a collective mindset when you talk about one garment.”

The t-shirt got its start as a modest substitute for the thick, itchy woolen undergarments that European men wore beneath their work clothes. Noblemen wore its cotton predecessors under their fancy garments to prevent sweating and odor. In the 1880s, American sailors wore “flannelette,” which were cotton flannel V-neck shirts, as part of their uniforms. French soldiers wore the lightweight tops during World War I.

Marlon Brando wears a t-shirt as outerwear in "A Streetcar Named Desire," which was uncommon in the 1950s. Photo: wikimedia.org Creative Commons licensed

Coined for its simple structure and resemblance to the letter ‘T’ the garment gained popularity as an undergarment in the beginning of the 20th century. In the 1920s, Webster’s dictionary added ‘T-shirt’ to its tomes. Later, it would simply be referred to as a “tee.”

By World War II, the t-shirt was a standard issue garment for men in the U.S. army and navy and it became more acceptable to wear it as outerwear in hot weather. In 1932, Jockey International, Inc. developed what is known as the modern crewneck t-shirt for the University of Southern California’s football team to absorb sweat and prevent chafing on the shoulders. In 1948, the first known political t-shirt surfaced bearing the slogan “Dew It With Dewey”. But it wasn’t until 1951 that Marlon Brando shocked American moviegoers when he wore a plain white t-shirt, not as an undergarment but as a top in “A Streetcar Named Desire.” Americans were in the throes of the McCarthy era and, thanks to Hollywood, the t-shirt, jeans and leather jacket trio became synonymous with social protest.

“Hollywood played a major, major role,” Johnson asserted. These “cool guys” were transforming film costumes and making what was considered a working class shirt appropriate outside of work, simultaneously producing a pop culture icon.

Prior to World War II and these films, screen actors wore a shirt and tie uniform, Brunel wrote. Infamous bad boys like Brando and James Dean (in “Rebel Without a Cause”) further popularized the garment by wearing them in movies and on TV.

“I could have sold torn t-shirts with my name on them,” Brando said in 1966. “They would have sold a million.”

By the 1960s, even women were catching on. In the French film “Breathless,” Jean Seberg’s white tee–demarcated with the New York Herald Tribune logo–kicked off the ‘girl power’ era.

“In contemporary societies, the sartorial equivalent of the hat is the T-shirt, which expresses social identity in many different ways, ranging from identity politics to lifestyle,” she wrote.

But Brunel argues that once high fashion designers got their hands on the t-shirt, the garment betrayed its democratic origins. The demand for it was one of “luxurious relaxation,” she wrote. Cotton was blended with other fabrics like Lycra, silk or cashmere, straight shirts became more fitted and designers branded them with their logos for a hefty profit.

“This symbol of consumer society has turned into a kind of portable modern medium; one both affective and demanding,” Brunel wrote.

By the 1960s and 70s, tie-dye techniques and screen printing technology made t-shirts an even bigger commercial success and variations of it–tank tops, V-necks scoop necks and muscle tees–became ubiquitous. The garment started to be mass produced in sportswear but the hippie era hearkened individuation. The ban on t-shirts in schools was lifted too and the shirt ironically became an equalizer among social classes.

“People were breaking away from the masses,” Johnson said. “The t-shirt is a blank slate to do that on.”

Individualizing the t-shirt by taking the mass produced item and altering it was a major hallmark in its history. Johnson said it became more about what was printed on the t-shirt than the garment’s style statement.

And in the 1980s, when corporate America boomed and women donned the power suit, the t-shirt became a commercial object. Designers and consumers branded themselves, and rock bands and professional sports realized they could make a lot of money by printing their names on cheap tees.

“You start getting the slogans and people are paying really to advertise,” Johnson said.

In 1989, Dov Charney started up American Apparel and, though many iterations later, eventually made the t-shirt sexy. His company and its business model have provided the canvas for retailers, wholesalers and designers to push the tee into its next era.

In Los Angeles County, where the clothing is as breezy as the weather, fashion is the largest source of revenue after the entertainment industry and brought in $32.9 billion in 2005, according to a report from the California Fashion Association. Johnson believes the t-shirt has played a major role in those figures.

Today, the Web has spawned new droves of t-shirt designers through sites like CafePress, Zazzle and Custom Ink. Hundreds of blogs take up residence online to chronicle new trends and humorous handiwork.

“The Internet is trackable. You know where your customers are coming from and that allows you to build your brand and market your brand based on your target demographic,” said Coty Gonzales, a Honolulu-based t-shirt blogger. “It’s hard to do all of that with a magazine ad. How do you a person purchased your T-Shirt because of an ad they saw in Maxim magazine? You can’t.”

The t-shirt is still the best way to identify a group or feel like you’re part of one. We wear them to show our political affiliations, favorite teams or designers or show off our alma mater. We lounge in them or throw a blazer on top to prepare for a night out. It is arguably one of the most versatile garments in our wardrobe and will probably continue to be in the years to come.

Whatever the material, armies of people from designers to manufacturers are scrambling to get their names and ideas onto the walking billboards. Jerry Hernandez is one of them.

An actor and designer, Jerry Hernandez is increasing his creative cache by venturing into the t-shirt business Photo: Montana

The process begins here, in the mind of a designer like Jerry Hernandez, who is using American Apparel’s basic 50-50 style tee to begin his own clothing line. To Hernandez, it makes sense to start this venture in LA’s ready-to-wear mecca, the same place where about 1,050 other fashion designers do business, according to the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation.

Hernandez is fumbling with his Bluetooth headset as he pulls off the Azusa exit of the 60 freeway.

“I wasn’t setting out to be a designer by any means,” Hernandez says, turning on a residential street to gather his thoughts while talking on the phone. “I liked the idea of playing around with making fun of pop [culture], using the shirt to get the ideas in my head on something.”

A t-shirt is one of the most basic clothing items a person can own. It has become the gateway for up-and-coming designers to break into the industry. Designer Katharine Hamnett originated the slogan tee in 1980s Britain, which some would argue is the predecessor of the designer tee.

In 1983, Katharine Hamnett launched her first protest t-shirts donning slogans like CHOOSE LIFE, PRESERVE THE RAINFORESTS, and SAVE THE WHALES, which were designed to be copied to effect world change by using the excess media coverage that the label was receiving. A percentage of the profits went to charity.

“I wanted to put a really large message on T-shirts that could be read from 20 or 30 feet away,” she told The Guardian newspaper in 2009. “Slogans work on so many different levels; they’re almost subliminal. They’re also a way of people aligning themselves to a cause. They’re tribal. Wearing one is like branding yourself.”

Hamnett was photographed wearing a slogan tee proclaiming “58% Don’t Want Pershing” with Margaret Thatcher in 1984 that launched slogan tees everywhere. The shirt was a statement to the British prime minister that Britons didn’t want US Pershing missiles to be based in the UK at the end of the Cold War. More recently, style icon Sarah Jessica Parker donned one of Hamnett’s designs that said “Stay Alive in 85″ in “Sex and the City: The Movie.” The more a tee is in the public eye, the better it is for a designer.

This suits the 24-year-old Hernandez, who is from Montebello, Calif. He grew up reading books about the factory era and Andy Warhol. He knows how the publicity side of the fashion industry works and he doesn’t like it. He doesn’t want to take the popular route of photographing t-shirt-clad celebrities to make a name for himself and is looking for other methods to build his brand name. His is probably the same struggle most designers have when they are starting out. But just two years ago, Hernandez watched Henry Holland launch his first clothing line at London Fashion Week. It was collection based on Hamnett-like slogan tees. Soon after, knockoffs of the British designer’s bright-colored oversized tops popped up around the world.

Young and edgy, Henry Holland built on the principles of Hamnett’s slogan model and splayed his first t-shirts with racy lines like “I’ve got more than a handful, Naomi Campbell” and “Give us a blow, Daisy Low” and ultimately built himself a clothing empire praised by British Vogue as “proof that London doesn’t take itself too seriously and that fashion is fun, after all.”

This method of branding is akin to that which marketers have used for decades. But experts say few people consciously think about that and the more affordable the t-shirt, the better.

“The marketers see the t-shirt as a potential walking billboard or premium that people will wear and that can communicate brand information,” said Bettina Cornwell, a professor of marketing at the University of Michigan. “So, they might like to make [the t-shirt] as affordable as possible as another path for communication.”

“It’s a fashion statement. The t-shirt is very transparent,” said t-shirt blogger Coty Gonzales. “It tells the people around you what kind of person you are.”

Hernandez also saw how RVCA, a surfer brand based in Costa Mesa, Calif., made a name for itself by showcasing artists’ work on t-shirts. The brand used the shirt to publicize the artist collective, not just make a fashion statement, and that is the model Hernandez is hoping to adopt. Soon Hernandez tried on the trend that made big brands like House of Holland and RVCA popular. He understood that printing on t-shirts is the premier method for branding.

When fashion megalith Christian Dior had financial trouble, the brand looked to t-shirts for a solution. They emblazoned “J’adore Dior” on them to reach out to a younger clientele and sold the shirts for $200. The t-shirt is the affordable alternative for someone who wants to tout a brand.

“People find that the brand expressions are succinct in communicating [their ideas] versus a self-prepared slogan or self-prepared picture [placed on t-shirt],” Cornwell said. “There’s a lot that around as well but brand names do a lot of that work very efficiently.”

“That’s a way to explicitly tell someone you adhere to the brand. That you adhere to that lifestyle. It’s a much more affordable,” FIDM fashion expert Christina Johnson said.

“A woman who couldn’t afford the shoes or purse could afford the t-shirt and that’s a way to align herself with the brand. I don’t think most people realize that or care to think about that. Most people are more interested in using the designer’s world view and using that lifestyle as their own. They don’t really think about the real nitty gritty that they are paying to be an advertisement.”

But Hernandez says he isn’t in the business to make money. Nor does he want celebutantes like Miley Cyrus or Kim Kardashian to be spotted in his gear just to make it popular.

“It was the canvas more than trying to create something cool,” he said.

PHOTO GALLERY: They may look the same at first glance but each of the Butterboy tees says something different. Click on the photo for a closer look at the Pop tees and suggest a spinoff slogan in the comments section.

His Butterboy collection is inspired by Andy Warhol, who called himself a “butterboy,” who is someone in between being a momma’s boy and a man. Around the same time Warhol wrote those words, Elle magazine announced that the t-shirt would become a basic item of clothing “that will never go out of fashion because it’s already beyond fashion” simply because it’s a basic item of clothing.

“I never thought I’d get involved with clothing ever, it just kind of happened,” Hernandez said. “It’s because I see what a t-shirt could do.”

The Butterboy prints are based on pop art comic book bursts that transpose key words with a graphic of the word “POP.” One tee reads “I can’t believe it’s not POP,” another “I think therefore I POP” and “The POP must go on.” It costs him about $1.75 to $2 to produce the shirt and he plans to sell them for upwards of $20 beginning when he launches the Butterboy Web site. But he has to order 10,000 shirts, which is the minimum sample quantity he gets from his manufacturer. Lucky for him, his father is backing his business endeavor.

Hernandez steps out of his car into a cool afternoon breeze. He then walks into The Coffee Bean on Santa Monica Boulevard and Beverly Glen gripping a large black portfolio filled with photos and sketches.

He sits at a table outside the coffee shop, scanning an open table inside the coffee shop. He’s wearing a low-cut black and white tank top and a light denim button-down shirt over it, dark skinny jeans and patent leather tuxedo shoes. He accessorizes his outfit with a thick gold bracelet. He would have worn one of his signature Butterboy tees, but decided to preserve it for a night out rather than work.

He says he wants his t-shirts to be more than a walking billboard. With 10 screens prints in his line, he thinks “it’s the best way to promote [the artist collective] and for me this line is the face of the brand we’re creating.”

Now sitting in the warmth of the coffee shop, Hernandez plays with his BlackBerry while he greets Jenn Brigham, the graphic designer he hired to build Butterboy.com.

Hernandez scatters small prints from the t-shirt photo shoot on the table as if he were dealing cards. Black and white images of a male and female model cover the table. Hernandez sifts through his portfolio to show her his old sketches of the site’s opening page: his logo, which is loosely derived from Andy Warhol’s face.

Then Brigham pulls out her versions of the opening page mockups and sets them on the table. Hernandez lets out a small gasp and says, “I love this,” tapping parts of the page where the models are. He lifts the print, hugs it to his chest and leans back on the chair.

“It looks like legit…oh my gosh,” he sighs. Setting it back on the table, Brigham shows him the changes she plans to make and he nods.

“I can’t stop looking at it,” he says.

The face of one of his friends who is a model and dancer is enlarged on most of the page. A tuft of blonde hair sticks out under the male model’s tilted police hat. In gold cursive letters, the hat reads “Butterboy.” Next to the enlarged head stands a full-length girl wearing an extra large t-shirt as a dress with black thigh-high boots. The shirt reads “Will Work for POP,” a play on what looks like a “working girl,” Hernandez admits.

“They’re the face of the brand, they embody the brand,” he says as he smiles.

He says he hopes his brand will turn into an artistic collaboration, much like RVCA’s artist network.

“If you’re an artist, I think a lot of the times they create so many pieces that if you’re able to put it on a t-shirt, more people can see it,” he says. “It’ll be a platform to showcase what people can do.”

Los Angeles was instrumental in the concept of glamour, American Apparel just builds off of that, fashion expert Christina Johnson said.

While Hollywood played the leading role in much of the t-shirt’s history, the downtown-LA based company is launching itself to the forefront of the American fashion stage.

CEO Dov Charney in one of his American Apparel stores. Photo: flickr commons (Creative Commons licensed)

Dov Charney is the company’s notorious founder, who gets a lot of press because of the sexual harassment lawsuits brought by his employees. In the suits, the employees claim that Charney took photos of them in various states of undress to be used for ad campaigns.

Charney, originally from Montreal, went to college in Connecticut and would buy American-made t-shirts to sell to his Canadian friends who wanted in on these American icons.

“It sort of started with an obsession with American culture and the iconic American t-shirt,” said American Apparel marketing specialist Ryan Holiday said. Charney started the company in 1989 and opened the first American Apparel shop in 2003. In 2008, American Apparel’s retail sales reached more than $341 million, increasing 62 percent from the previous year, according to the company’s annual records. There are 143 stores in 11 countries.

“The first reason to buy American Apparel is the clothes are fantastic,” Holiday says.

Holiday shoves open the cage door to an aging elevator in American Apparel’s downtown LA headquarters. Black and white posters of women in leotards and tees line the white service carriage walls. The doors screech open on the seventh floor and Holiday steps out into a hallway leading into American Apparel’s white showroom. Pop music bleats from the speakers throughout the white room and boldly colored garments hang from the white fencelike display walls.

“So the things come in there as yarn they get knitted into fabrics then they get dyed, cut and they come here where they’re sewn,” he says as he breezes through the showroom into the factory. That’s possible because the company is “vertically integrated,” which means the manufacturer is responsible for everything from product development, to knitting the yarn, to sewing and distribution.

“The cycle is all done concurrently and simultaneously,” Holiday says as he waves to a bay of employees constructing and sewing individual pieces of a single garment. “You might hear that a company is working on their fall line in July. Our product development cycle can be as short as a week. So, an idea can go from a concept in someone’s head to something you can purchase in one of our stores in London, or some foreign country, inside a week. And that’s what vertical integration is about.”

Though Hollywood disseminates western notions of dressing worldwide, the t-shirt has become synonymous with LA fashion partially because of American Apparel, Johnson said.

American Apparel catches up with some company patrons at their annual factory sale. Source: AmericanApparelVideo

“American Apparel started…with that very fitted high quality sort of excellent t-shirt and that’s why we’re so successful in the wholesale industry,” Holiday says, almost shouting over the whooshing of the machines. “Screen printers and uniform companies, that’s all they really care about it.”

American Apparel shirts are thinner, more fitted and more expensive than regular tees. Each garment dons a tag declaring it is proudly “Made in Downtown LA,” which simultaneously sets it apart from other manufacturers that outsource their labor and have come under the sweatshop stigma. However, some consumers care about the garment’s durability and affordability before they even consider where the garment is made.

Helena Botros, 24, from Palos Verdes, Calif., said she only buys their t-shirts and tights, but their aesthetic became a turnoff.

“At first I thought I really liked them because of their models. They use real women–everyday people–to do their modeling. But then they crossed the line of social acceptability,” she said. “They don’t really cater to full-figured women, be it above a size 12, if that’s full-figured in our society, so that’s a problem.”

However, she does think their business model is great and gives her a sense of pride.

“I’m a patriot at heart. Having things made here means American jobs, which makes me feel good,” she said. “I like to say things are made in downtown LA.”

The factory boasts more than 5,000 workers at capacity. Holiday said they churn out well over a million products a week. Factory workers are paid $13 to $18 an hour, with health benefits if they are full-time. Many of them are immigrants. When the company is hiring, the line of applicants winds around the building, Holiday said. The company pushes its Legalize LA campaign that calls for immigration reform and employment for undocumented workers. This business model–divergent from most t-shirt retailers that use overseas sweatshops to produce their tees–has gained American Apparel respect in the fashion industry.

“Dov’s here [in the factory]. So, Dov’s walking these floors and seeing what’s being made and if there’s problems or he notices inefficiencies, they’ll get fixed really quickly,” Holiday says as he points out yet another advantage he sees in the vertical integration model.

To American Apparel, it’s about more than the t-shirt, it’s about a proactive lifestyle and it just happened to begin with the beloved garment. In turn, American Apparel clothing appeals to socially conscious consumers. Wearing an American Apparel t-shirt promotes this work ethic in the same manner, albeit more subtle, that a t-shirt printed with Coca-Cola’s logo would promote the soft drink.

“This is a company operated and run from the perspective of the customers who shop there,” Holiday says. Company employees, aside from factory workers, are of a much younger generation, which helps the company be “more in tune with customers,” he says.

Dominique Nottage, a visual merchandiser for Nordstrom, loves that American Apparel offers more than just t-shirt fare, that she can find one item in a variety of colors and that the garments are made in the U.S.

“They are setting the standard for manufacturing American-made apparel. They help to stimulate the economy so I think a lot of manufacturers can learn a lot from them,” she said. “As far as setting the standard for t-shirts, American Apparel offers a lot more in the way of color and the fact that most of their shirts are unisex.”

But some industry veterans are put off by the company’s self-proclaimed edge.

“Their ad campaign is so inappropriate and very sexual,” said Angie Awadalla, a freelance stylist who is an account executive for Sovereign Code, an LA-based apparel company. She believes American Apparel is “overrated.”

“Their stores feel so overwhelming for me. It’s too compact and not very shoppable,” she said. “The way it is merchandised feels very 80s and not modern and trendy.”

Awadalla said she bought an American Apparel shirt once but never wore it. The only positive she sees in the company is that their clothes are made domestically but sometimes that isn’t enough for what she considers a hefty price tag.

“It is important that I have clothes that are made in the US and I own a lot of it,” she said. “However, sometimes it comes down to what an individual can afford. I can go and buy a tank at Forever 21 for $6 versus $19 at American Apparel.”

On the sixth floor of the factory, Holiday speaks above the whooshing sewing machines and the workers’ Spanish chatter. He is wearing faded blue jeans, a purple American Apparel crew-neck tee and sneakers. He says masseuses wander the floors to alleviate the workers’ tension and workers are required to get up and stretch every hour. It’s 79 degrees on the November afternoon and it’s even warmer inside the factory. A cool breeze and natural light pour into the open windows causing little need for extra light–another way the company has cut costs.

While American Apparel manufactures everything from underwear to dresses to head bands, its most popular item is the basic t-shirt.

“American Apparel appeals to so many,” Johnson said. “They’re making a t-shirt sexy. They’re making knitware sexy and something about their publicity campaign definitely has an edgy aesthetic.”

The company’s gritty ads use “real people” as models including company employees and friends rather than professional models. Holiday said they do this because their clothes are meant to look good on “real people,” who are their target consumers, not models.

]]>http://www.nardinesaad.com/wethetshirt/the-manufacturer/feed/1The Printer: Behind the Screenshttp://www.nardinesaad.com/wethetshirt/the-printer/
http://www.nardinesaad.com/wethetshirt/the-printer/#commentsWed, 03 Mar 2010 04:03:43 +0000Nardine Saadhttp://www.nardinesaad.com/wethetshirt/?p=340So, you’ve already ordered the type of t-shirts you want and picked the art to jazz them up. Here’s what comes next. Click on the numbers on the graphic below to get an exclusive behind the screens look at the printing process at David Knepprath’s shop. Graphic: Nardine Saad

Small-time t-shirt designers, who aren’t backed by big brands, go to David Knepprath to execute their visions.

Knepprath is one of more than 2,000 screen printers in Los Angeles County, based on a simple Yellow Pages search. Knepprath’s own history creating cotton concoctions has made him an expert on the screen printing industry. The entrance to his shop is clean and simple. The office is sparsely decorated with two rolling racks of sample shirts and a few screened hats and tees are tacked to the wall.

David Knepprath owns and operates two T-Shirt Pros locations. He got his start screen printing in his own kitchen more than 20 years ago. Photo: Nardine Saad

Knepprath sits in the far corner behind a counter among his employees while he explains how to use his Web site to a customer over the phone.

“They have to be done in the same order,” he bellows into the phone, his booming voice drowning out the voices of the other employees in the front office.

Knepprath shuffles through the shop into the back rooms, past the printers and up the stairs to his office.

Silk screening inks, Knepprath says, are the likely reason that t-shirts gained popularity in the 1960s, allowing them to become universal billboards and symbols of a consumer society. He’s clear, though: he’d never wear a billboard he didn’t want to promote or pay to advertise for someone else.

“I’d never wear a Nike or a Reebok,” he says.

Twenty years ago, when Knepprath started T-shirt Pros, “Everything was American made–Hanes, Fruit of the Loom–they were all made in U.S.” he said. During his time in the business, Knepprath has dealt with most of the changes in the t-shirt industry firsthand. So, what happened?

“Can you say NAFTA?” he chuckles. “Now none of them are [American made], except for American Apparel.”

David Knepprath's Culver City screen printing shop has been catering to graphic design aficionados and Hollywood since 1989. Photo: Nardine Saad

When Knepprath started T-Shirt Pros, a white Hanes Beefy-T cost him $3. Before the North American Free Trade Agreement, the imported stuff was “junk,” he says. Today, one shirt costs $1.75 because it is no longer made domestically but is still much superior in quality than it was 30 years ago. That was when he bought his first emulsion printing kit from Aaron Brothers. Knepprath had never taken an art class; silk screen printing was just a creative outlet for the then advertising exec.

“I was able to go from concept to my own product,” Knepprath says. “I could do it all. I was consumed by it.” This was his form of American Apparel’s vertical integration model. He later built his own one-color screen printing press, set up shop in his kitchen and cured the t-shirts in his oven before finally starting his company in 1989. He now owns two large printing presses that can screen up to 12 ink colors onto one item. His clientele varies but all customers have to place a minimum order of 24 shirts to use his services. Knepprath’s largest order to date has been for 75,000 t-shirts for the St. Baldrick’s Foundation. “I wish every order was like that,” he said later.

Sitting behind his desk, which is splayed with prints, documents and letters, Knepprath rocks back and forth in his leather chair beaming with excitement. A cork board rests on the wall by his desk tacked with newspaper clippings, decals and postcards. The faint whining of the press churning downstairs is drowned out by his laugh when he remembers some of the ridiculous things people have asked him to do with t-shirts.

In 2000, he said stylists working on “The Mexican” film brought him a fitted tee that Brad Pitt was supposed to wear in the movie.

Knepprath leans forward in his chair and his blue eyes bulge. He begins to speak slowly but his voice is still amplified.

Shelves packed with screening ink fill a corner of the shop. If the customer doesn't find the color they want already made, the printer will custom mix a new one. Photo: Nardine Saad

“It was black, long-sleeved and from Barney’s!” he yells, incredulity at the shirt’s lackluster appearance dripping from every word. And the kicker: the shirt cost $80 and came with care instructions for the consumer to properly scrunch it up so that it would maintain its unique crinkliness.

Knepprath also witnesses demand for shirts almost daily. The past two years when the Lakers were playing in the championships, Knepprath said he had a 10-person crew stay at the Culver City print shop overnight. They watched the final game and prepped thousands of t-shirts immediately proclaiming that the Lakers had indeed won the championship in just a couple of hours.

“It’s a lot of responsibility because it’s a timely thing,” Knepprath says. “As soon as they win, we’re like: okay, start the presses!”

He supplied the shirts to sporting good stores, which all had different pickup times throughout the night, so that the shirts would be in stores the next morning. Sports fans, he believes, can be just as bad as fashionistas.

“Sports uniforms have three different styles: home, away and an alternate jerseys they use. And they change every few years and you have to go buy it,” Knepprath says, still rocking in his chair. “If you’re a big sports fan you gotta follow along.”

We, the T-Shirt stops people on the streets of Los Angeles to talk to them about their t-shirts. Source: NardineS on YouTube

Twenty-seven year old Joe Abdelnour sits in his bedroom in Long Beach, Calif. playing Yahoo backgammon and crawling Facebook for status updates on a Monday afternoon. He is wearing boxer shorts and a blue t-shirt, which he got from a work benefit before he was laid off, screened with a white golf ball and cancer ribbon.

Abdelnour hasn’t thought much about who designed, marketed, or printed the t-shirts he owns, nor their history going back to European nobility and soldiers in World War II. He represents a typical American…but one who has built his wardrobe from freebies. Out of the 40-some t-shirts he owns, he says he easily obtained 35 of them gratis.

Abdelnour is proud of his little collection, “I sound like a real catch right now,” he jokes. His free t-shirts are folded neatly in a wooden chest of drawers nearby and the nicer ones he owns that display Puma and soccer logos hang in his closet. He says he likes folding his shirt because when he folds them he remembers the funny stories about how he got them free of charge. He cares little that he promoted things that have come and gone–fad products, club openings, candy bars and walks for a cure. It’s only fair if he gets something out of it. In most cases, that something is a t-shirt.

Many consumers can't deny the allure of a free t-shirt, no matter what the tee promotes. Graphic: Nardine Saad

“People will eat more than they should because a deal is offered to them [or they’ll] buy more product than they need. They feel like they’re getting a deal or they feel like they’re getting something ‘for free’ would be my assay of why a t-shirt works so well.”

Abdelnour posts a comment on his friend’s Facebook status. When asked why he collected so many he simply laughs and says, “because it’s a t-shirt and it covers me when needed.”

Honolulu-based t-shirt blogger Coty Gonzales, 28, started reviewing t-shirts in 2008 and has developed a following of t-shirt enthusiasts online since. He said more than $3,000-worth of t-shirts have been sent to him to review in the past year and a half and he owns close to 200 t-shirts himself.

“The key word is free,” Gonzales said. “It’s something that [people] find to be useful and/or something that they could easily give away to someone else. Who says no to free stuff? I don’t, especially if it is of use to me.”

Each individual has his or her own reason for donning a specific t-shirt. However, Gonzales believes that free t-shirts that commemorate events, souvenir tees and others that have been written off and crumpled away into a corner of our closets don’t make as much of a lifestyle statement as the t-shirts we pay for.

“If I see someone wearing a Sean John T-Shirt, I know they like hip hop,” Gonzales said. “If I see someone wearing an Ed Hardy shirt then I automatically assume that they are high-maintenance since they don’t mind spending $100 on a single t-shirt. A simple white t-shirt tells me that you’re either a modernist with an eye for style or [you] work in manual labor. A Quicksilver t-shirt tells me that you like surfing, skateboarding, extreme sports. The t-shirt is an easy way to let people know who you are, without actually saying it.”

Today, the t-shirt is a wardrobe staple and a comfy alternative to dressing up in a decreasingly buttoned-up society. It’s fitted, multi-colored and can be worn with just about anything. And because it appeals to so many, people will continue to buy them.

“In our movement toward casual, wearing a t-shirt is sort of an artifact. How much more casual can you get than walking around in your underwear, right?” Cornwell said. “It didn’t make the trend but it certainly has ridden on it. I don’t think it’s the source of change but certainly is an artifact of change. You can see that people are wearing t-shirts but the move toward casual is precipitated by the t-shirt becoming popular somehow.”

So what’s next for the t-shirt? FIDM fashion expert Christina Johnson believes going green by using sustainable fabrics and recycling vintage tees will make a comeback.

“Anything is fashion now. Anything, any garment that is a means of self-expression or a cultural reference is fashion. Is it haute couture? No. But it is fashion,” Johnson asserted. “[Fashion is]something that changes constantly and morphs.”

]]>http://www.nardinesaad.com/wethetshirt/the-consumer/feed/4You, the T-Shirthttp://www.nardinesaad.com/wethetshirt/you-the-t-shirt/
http://www.nardinesaad.com/wethetshirt/you-the-t-shirt/#commentsWed, 03 Mar 2010 02:45:33 +0000Nardine Saadhttp://www.nardinesaad.com/wethetshirt/?p=334What’s your favorite t-shirt? Is it the white one, one left over from high school, a concert tour tee, one with a funny slogan, one that belonged to an old boyfriend or the free one you got for doing something crazy?

We want to know!

Take We, the T-shirt’s poll or tell us about your favorite tee in the comments section below.